Civilian Disarmament: Who Gets The Last Word?

The Last Wordwith Lawrence O’Donnell nauseates me; to the point where I have to click over to Wealth TV to remind myself that personal aspiration isn’t a crime against humanity. But it’s my job to know what the anti-gunners are thinking or, more importantly, selling. In the segment above, Larry takes NRA Veep Wayne LaPierre to task for quoting Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black out of context. O’Donnell’s selling the idea that anyone who believes in “absolutism”—the belief that Americans’ Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms brooks no infringement whatsoever—is mentally challenged. Drilling down, O’Donnell asserts that support for “high capacity” magazines puts gun rights advocates into Crazy Town. Well . . .

It’s hard to argue that armed citizens should be less well armed (i.e., have lower capacity firearms) than criminals. O’Donnell’s bizarre, snarcastic rebuttal—the assertion that “Crazy Wayne” wants law-abiding citizens to have “loads of cocaine right besides their loaded guns”—shows he’s firing rhetorical blanks.

If that’s not the lunatic calling the fanatic (in a nice way) insane, O’Donnell goes on to admit that criminals don’t follow gun laws. And then . . . “If criminals don’t pay income taxes does that mean that NRA members shouldn’t have to pay income taxes because criminals don’t?”

O’Donnell ends his logically-challenged rant by claiming that Wayne LaPierre is “Washington’s chief lobbyist for criminals.” The NRA jefe’s constant call for harsher penalties for criminals counts for nothing when character assassination is the dish of the day. I guess it’s Opposites Day in O’Donnell’s head. Again. Still.

Which leaves us where? MSNBC has less viewers than the redheads’ section of thechive.com. But it worries me that a mainstream media pundit would so willingly, so joyfully sacrifice Americans’ right to armed self-defense.

O’Donnell fails to understand, acknowledge or appreciate the fact that infringing upon Americans’ Constitutional right to keep and bear arms by, say, limiting legal firearms to seven round magazines, puts millions of law-abiding citizens in harm’s way. It’s a spectacular failure of empathy.

Yes, it’s a war of words. Yes, the disarmament Democrats will be punished in the polls. Eventually. Meanwhile, right now, by their deeds American gun owners should be known. Lest we forget, we are in the middle of the greatest firearms and ammunition and sales surge in the history of this country.

Anyone who thinks that Americans will surrender their guns willingly because elitist utopians like O’Donnell will convince them that it’s for their own good is ignoring commercial reality. And in The Land of the Free, where the business of America is business, the consumer gets the last word.

29 Responses to Civilian Disarmament: Who Gets The Last Word?

Traitors would,(IMHO) be more fitting. And have you noticed the common theme “We support the second amendment, BUT…….” HYPOCRITES the lot of them.
Not my favorite:
“It is true that the provisions of the Bill of Rights were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century whenever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many.”
─ Justice Hugo Black

When will firearms companies pull a barret and start telling law enforcement and government agencies so suck it and quit doing business with them? Why do these firearm companies still reside in such anti gun states? They should all pack up and move out….

> O’Donnell’s selling the idea that anyone who believes in “absolutism”—
> the belief that Americans’ Constitutionally protected right to [ ________ ]
> brooks no infringement whatsoever—is mentally challenged.

Does O’Donnell say the same of the absolutists who, say, believe that there should be no restrictions on abortion; including the “right” to partial-birth abortion, the “right” of a minor to get an abortion without parental consent or notification, or the “right” to take a minor across state lines to get an abortion?

None of the above are explicitly enumurated in the Bill of Rights, yet groups like the ACLU support the “right” to all of them. And restrictions on any of the above are portrayed as a grave threat to our liberty.

Note that my intent is not to discuss the pros and cons of these positions, only the absolutist position on “absolutism”.

There is only one group that matters that supports ALL of our Constitutional rights and that is the Cato Institute. Some people may not like some of their positions such as their stand on so called hate speech (like some people one here) which they say is a violation of the First Amendment or that they are fighting the Patriot Act which they claim violates many of our rights (I happen to agree) but at least they are consistent unlike the ACLU which clings to the belief that the Second Amendment is a group right despite logic and a Supreme Court ruling that says otherwise.

Remember it was Cato with Robert Levy at the lead, a man that has never owned a gun, that brought DC v Heller all the way to the Supreme Court and won a landmark decision for gun owners and the rights of the people. Where was the NRA? Up until the case went before the court they were fighting to not allow it to get there. It was the greatest victory for gun rights ever and the NRA was not only on the sidelines, they tried to stop it! It was the Cato Institute that protected our rights. Yes, the NRA finally weighed in with a amicus curiae brief once the case was inevitable but the fact remains they not only turned Heller and others down, they fought to keep the case out of court. Yeah, I know the NRA’s excuse. It doesn’t hold water with me. What did they want to do, wait until Obama stacked the Supreme Court and let the Brady Bunch bring a case before it?

I don’t think Cato is going to stand by and let some of these proposals go unchallenged. Some of the things the gun control people are talking about violate not only the Second but also the Fifth Amendment. Read the last dozen words of the Fifth Amendment and tell me how the government can legally confiscate guns. There is a case for them not being able to make them non-transferable since that in fact renders them worthless and some people would say amounts to the same thing as taking property without compensation.

Donate to Cato. They actually do something. As a bonus donations are tax deductible.

Here is a follow up from Cato on how the DC v Heller case is working out. There isn’t all the blood on the streets that the antis predicted, far from it:

Guns in the Capital City
By
Tim Lynch

During his news conference yesterday, President Obama said he was interested in more firearms research and warned that those who opposed his legislative agenda might try to “gin up fear.” Those are interesting claims. Let’s take a brief look at some recent history here in the District of Columbia.

In 2007, when a federal appellate court ruled that DC’s strict gun control laws were unconstitutional, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty told reporters he was “outraged.” The idea that DC residents could keep a gun in their home for self-defense, he feared, would bring more crime and violence. Mayor Fenty and the city’s lawyers appealed the Heller case to the Supreme Court, but lost.

It’s been several years since that landmark legal battle – so what happened?

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, a former DC prosecutor wrote:

Since the gun ban was struck down, murders in the District have steadily gone down, from 186 in 2008 to 88 in 2012, the lowest number since the law was enacted in 1976. The decline resulted from a variety of factors, but losing the gun ban certainly did not produce the rise in murders that many might have expected. The urge to drastically restrict firearms after mass murders like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month and in Aurora, Colo., in July, is understandable. In effect, many people would like to apply the District’s legal philosophy on firearms to the entire nation. Based on what happened in Washington, I think that would be a mistake. Any sense of safety and security would be a false one.

“Utopia is now” for a guy like O’Donnell: He’s actually getting paid to say this sloppy stuff! If thinking the ownership of a magazine size commonly carried by ordinary low-experience LEO’s, for insertion into a standard semi-auto patrol rifle, spells Crazy Town, well, haul in all the LEO’s for a mental checkup. You’ll find they believe the same thing I do about what the criminals have. As for Cocaine, we all know that’s a NYC and San Francisco thing, not a Des Moines, Iowa, thing. Evaluating the slur-slinging unguided-missile-mouth’s comment about taxes, the Constitution specifically provides for the lawfulness of Federal Income Tax in the 16th Amendment, while also establishing the right to keep and bear arms in the 2nd Amendment. Criminals generally neither pay income tax on their proceeds nor keep and bear arms for Constitutionally protected purposes. They are fully the opposite, morally and legally, of the NRA. and O’Donnell knows it.

“If criminals don’t pay income taxes does that mean that NRA members shouldn’t have to pay income taxes because criminals don’t?”

That’s actually a good rhetorical point. By definition, being a good guy means you live under self-imposed restrictions that don’t hinder the bad guys. Using the misbehavior of bad people to guide your own actions is a slippery slope indeed.

The real issue, though, is how *much* restriction a good guy should labor under. And where it comes from. And what the effect of the restriction would be.

Ultimately these restrictions are arbitrary. You can’t put a number on “good.” Is it somehow immoral to have 10 million dollars? How about 10 rounds versus 30? How fast is too fast when it comes to firing a gun? Or driving a car? Depends on who has it and what they’re doing with it.

That’s what makes the difference. The law recognizes that kind of difference all the time — it’s why there’s such a thing as justifiable homicide — yet the gun grabbers seemingly can’t grasp the concept.

That’s actually a good rhetorical point. By definition, being a good guy means you live under self-imposed restrictions that don’t hinder the bad guys. Using the misbehavior of bad people to guide your own actions is a slippery slope indeed.

I see what you’re saying, but I respectfully disagree. I think the basis for this argument is the foundation of the logical dissonance between the two factions right now (being arbitrarily named “Liberals” vs “Conservatives”)

At a gross simplification, a government is created by 1-many people who currently maintain power. Basically, a set of people stand in one spot, armed, and say “This is mine.” and if nobody proves them wrong, then it’s theirs by right of conquest. That’s the basis for society. When these people decide to empower others to combat any incursions into their power base, they create a set of rules for the people they’re empowering to live by. These rules SHOULD be based around those held as important by the power holders and work for their enlightened self-interest. So no, they shouldn’t really be giving anything up. The government formed by their choices should reflect their world view.

As the size of the set of the empowered people grows to 330 million, you get into issues where there are so many conflicting views, it becomes extremely difficult to reach consensus on anything. At some point we as a society somehow decided that the opinions of 51% of the people were morally correct. To some extent, it’s just an extension of the Indian gang rapes on a larger scale. The rights of the minority are subservient to the desires of the majority.

The distinction is narrow but important, and at the foundation is about whether you believe we exist as a collection of unique individuals that should be supported and empowered to act within a universally acceptable set of criteria; or if you feel that we exist in a collective and the rules should be based around what is best for the collective.

If you are in the first camp, then no, you shouldn’t be ‘giving anything up’. Empowering a civil servant to protect you from criminals, or a standing army to protect you from external invasions, does not revoke your powers in any way. It’s only when you feel that the power of the mobility should be used to force others to act in the mob’s best interest, instead of the person’s best interest, that you start trading rights.

Once you start doing it, you’re done. You can’t have a moral argument with a person once you’ve started trading morality. At the point where you concede that your rights are malleable based on the gross desires of the people around you, you’ve set yourself up to have no rights. It’s just a matter of time until the mob has convinced you to trade them all away. It’s the slow death.

Every single person who votes in the US is a gun owner. Most of them wield their gun by proxy, but they still point that gun at everyone else that doesn’t see eye-to-eye with them.

It’s funny that he just outright admits that the laws against machine guns and sawed off shotguns weren’t followed by criminals because criminals don’t follow the law. These new laws won’t be followed by criminals either. Like he says. SO WHY ON EARTH DO YOU SUPPORT THEM??? Obviously he MUST realize that they only affect the law-abiding and, by definition, the law-abiding don’t break laws. They don’t shoot people.

I just don’t get it. Left hand and right hand are on different planets here…

Can we all pool our money together and start buying shares of these stupid media companies so that we can start hiring pundits who support FREEDOM and the RIGHTS of the people? How would we go about getting that done bc I’d contribute!